I am completely thrilled to accept the 2017 InSEA Doctoral Award. My dissertation was completed in October 2013, near the beginning of the allowable timeframe for applying for this award; thus, this award comes at a time when I am able to reflect with hindsight. I feel especially grateful to have had such an amazing supervisor (Dr. Rita L. Irwin) and committee (Dr. Donal O’Donoghue and Dr. Teresa Dobson). Receiving this award has encouraged me to continue to publish, share and expand on the knowledge generated from my doctoral research.

My dissertation examines the notion of ‘network’ in art, learning, and teaching by examining the practices of seven contemporary artists who work with relational practices and digital media, and who also teach in universities. This research aligns itself with the notion…

]]>https://heidimay.wordpress.com/2017/02/22/insea-2017-doctoral-research-award/feed/0Featured Image -- 606heidimayBeyond the Televisualhttps://heidimay.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/beyond-the-televisual-article-by-brian-droitcour/
https://heidimay.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/beyond-the-televisual-article-by-brian-droitcour/#respondThu, 23 Jun 2011 00:07:12 +0000http://heidimay.wordpress.com/?p=590Continue reading →]]>There’s a feature article on Rhizome this week that does a great job of extending ideas I wrote about in 2001 to contemporary artists working in response to current internet/network culture. Ten years ago I was making and exploring art video that challenged our relationships to television and media culture, particularly the impact of televisual experiences on our psychological being. The article “Life Feed: Webcams, Art, and People” by Brian Droitcour provides an interesting overview of current artworks that explore psychological aspects of our personal relationships with the world wide web. The author acknowledges the history of video art — Vito Acconci’s Centers (1971); Richard Serra’s Boomerang (1974) — and Rosalind Krauss’s writing on the “aesthetics of narcissism” in relation to current work by Marisa Olson, Ryder Ripps, Guthrie Lonergan, and Petra Cortright in advance of a current exhibition by Jeremy Bailey and Antoine Catala.

]]>https://heidimay.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/beyond-the-televisual-article-by-brian-droitcour/feed/0heidimayrhizome_june22Fight the Power with Open Sourcehttps://heidimay.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/fight-the-power-with-open-source/
https://heidimay.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/fight-the-power-with-open-source/#respondTue, 24 May 2011 01:12:46 +0000http://heidimay.wordpress.com/?p=561Continue reading →]]>A few months ago I did a presentation at the CAA New York 2011 conference as part of the New Media Caucus panel: Fighting the Power – Open Source, Free Software, and Critical Digital Practices. My co-presenter Jody Baker and I were recently invited to do an encore for a symposium on online learning at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. It was great to be able to share our ideas and to listen to other presentations by fellow faculty and guest presenter from UBC, Brian Lamb (whom I always enjoy listening to). Here’s the slideshow from our presentation, followed by an abstract of our talk. * slideshow includes some video clips, so use the play slider to move through it

Processing Digital: Opening up to a Space of Emergence in Art Pedagogy, by Heidi May and Jody Baker, presented at CAA New York 2011

Networked art practices share conceptual overlaps with current discussions about pedagogy, particularly those that encourage interactive and collaborative methods of meaning-making in response to contemporary digital culture. Decentralized processes of learning, which exist in participatory artworks and nonhierarchal art education, are embraced by the open source movement. In this paper, we argue that open source software can be used to demonstrate a quest for knowledge that is not representational but rather performative-based – a temporal epistemology that is about critical inquiry of media and the ongoing discovery of creative ways of interacting with, and remixing, our reality. This paper incorporates the above ideas into a proposal for a team-taught digital studio/theory course that explores the “remix” phenomenon, operating online and utilizing open source media. Drawing upon previous online teaching experience, the pedagogical intentions and anticipations for this course will be discussed.

This article examines the decentralized approach to art curriculum from a pedagogical point of view, acknowledging advantages and disadvantages for art educators, and its contribution to a curriculum that captures the current cultural aesthetic experience. By referring to research in art education and writings of curriculum theorists, I argue for an application of decentralized approaches to teaching visual art in contemporary learning environments, with emphasis on instigating critical thinking within classroom critiques of student artwork. The following topics are addressed: the connection between decentralized curriculum and complexity thinking, the significance of dialogical exchange between teacher and students, the concept of emergent knowledge, and the noted desire for flexible curricular models in art education. I conclude by providing accounts of collaborative learning within university studio art courses that occur in online environments, with the intent of provoking thought for art education at all levels. Throughout, I describe a theoretical framework for understanding decentralized curriculum as I argue for a contemporary art pedagogy that is reflective of contemporary life.

]]>https://heidimay.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/education-that-reflects-the-current-cultural-aesthetic-experience/feed/2heidimayHow do contemporary artists help us understand the sociocultural shift that is our network culture?https://heidimay.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/how-do-contemporary-artists-help-us-understand-the-sociocultural-shift-that-is-our-network-culture/
https://heidimay.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/how-do-contemporary-artists-help-us-understand-the-sociocultural-shift-that-is-our-network-culture/#respondSat, 30 Apr 2011 21:17:05 +0000http://heidimay.wordpress.com/?p=522Continue reading →]]>What might our network society learn from a multidisciplinary way of thinking about one’s engagement with art?

Many contemporary artists need to financially support their practices by teaching at colleges and universities, this has become a fact of life. The act of teaching for some, however, becomes an engaging process that perhaps (intentionally or unintentionally) informs the production/dissemination/reception process of their art practices. Those whom consistently make a career of juggling a creative practice and teaching can be referred to as “artist-educators” – a hyphenated term that can be understood from a couple of different perspectives: 1) the individual primarily identifies as an artist, followed by (and maybe merged with) the role of teacher; 2) their students take on the role of soon-to-be artists of the future, thus they are educators of artists.

Generally speaking, artists today work across and in-between multiple disciplines and rarely refer to themselves as situated within one particular expressive medium, hence the descriptive terms multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. Contradictory to this sense of openness are the still narrow disciplinary structures of many art departments and institutions. Yet, within these medium-defined disciplines, perhaps the educational experience exceeds the disciplinary boundaries because of the artist-educators? What kinds of pedagogical limitations and challenges do these multidisciplinary artists experience? In what ways do their personal art practices impact how and what they teach? In what ways does their teaching impact what and how they make art about?

I am particularly interested in the practices of multidisciplinary and network artists that engage with critical aspects of digital technologies. How do these artist-educators approach the use of digital media in art curriculum and pedagogy?